Page 81 of Unleashed
The Hummer jerks to a stop at the curb.
“Third floor,” I say, eyes locked on the building across the street.
Caelian pulls his pistol from the holster and checks the clip. “Friendly little reunion, huh?” He grins like a shark.
Alexius doesn’t waste words. He just tugs on gloves, his expression steel. Maximo rips the slide back on his weapon and chambers a round with a metallic snap that cuts through the silence.
The street’s empty. Too empty. No neighbors milling, no music bleeding from the building. Just the hum of electricity and the sound of my pulse roaring in my ears.
I slam the door shut and cross the street, my boots eating the distance. Every step is a countdown. Time's bleeding out for Molly up there, and with every heartbeat I'm away from Everly, something in me withers, too.
We file into the building one by one, ascending stairs where pine-scented chemicals and dollar-store air fresheners wage a futile war against nicotine. With each step, my grip whitens around the pistol.
We climb three flights of stairs, our boots silent on concrete hollowed by years of traffic, until the third-floor landing stretches before us like a threshold to hell.
My chest is tight, not from the climb but from the certainty of what waits. Sean’s face in that video, smug, hungry for vengeance, is engraved in my head. Melanie’s father has been sharpening his hatred for years. And that makes him dangerous. Unpredictable.
At the landing, Maximo takes point, his back pressed to the wall. He glances at me. “Three, two?—”
I kick the door in.
The apartment yawns open, white walls, glass gleaming under too-bright lights. Nostalgia hits me, the familiarity of it all. Her old apartment is exactly as it was when she was still alive. Open, airy, neutral tones and minimal furniture. Melanie hated clutter, kept it sleek and clean like a page torn from a design magazine. Her dad didn’t change a fucking thing.
We rush in and enter the living room through the large archway. That’s the moment everything turns into the bowels of hell.
“Fuck,” Caelian breathes.
Molly hangs from the ceiling by chains bolted into steel beams, her head angled downward. Her arms stretch above her head, chains sliced into her wrists, mouth stitched with black thread into swollen lips, blood crusted down her chin.
Her bare skin maps a grotesque ledger of violence—thin red lines tallied across ribs, thighs, arms, too many to count. Each shallow breath lifts her chest barely enough to confirm she’s alive.
“Jesus,” Maximo mutters, but it’s not just a word. It’s a sound torn out of him, rough, strangled, like it caught on barbed wire in his throat. His gun dips an inch before he corrects it. His jaw locks so tight I hear the grind of teeth.
I’ve fought beside Maximo long enough to know he doesn’t rattle. He’s seen things, done things that would gut most men, and he walked away steady as stone every time. But right now? His face goes tight, his nostrils flare, and there’s a flicker in his eyes I’ve never seen before. Something raw. Anger. Horror. Maybe both.
“Okay, this looks like a real fucking problem.” Caelian stares at a black box beneath Molly’s tied feet, her toes pressed on top of it.
“Is that a?—”
“Yes, it is.” Sean appears at the top of the spiral staircase, wooden cross in hand, his hair white at the temples, his suit black but rumpled, as if he’s been living in it for weeks. His eyes burn with a holy madness, gleaming with manic satisfaction.
Instinct kicks in, and I aim, finger on the trigger.
"Don't even think about it." He gestures at the black box with a flick of his wrist as he descends. "That device needs a code. One that only exists up here." He taps a finger against his temple, his smile stretching wider as my jaw locks tight. "Shoot me, the code dies with me. Try to free her, and the pressure plate under her feet detonates. Either way, they'll be scraping pieces of all of us off the pavement."
The words land like a blow. Not because they’re surprising, but because they close options. There’s no clean hero’s bullet here.
“Let her down,” I say, voice flat to hide the tremor underneath.
A soft chuckle escapes him, dry as bone against stone. “Not doing that.”
“She has nothing to do with this.”
“Just like my Melanie had nothing to do with your family fucking drama!” His voice reverberates around the room, an echo of vengeance. “But she died anyway.”
“I’m sorry you lost her,” Alexius’ voice cuts sharp. “But we didn’t do that to her. We didn’t kill her.”
Sean’s eyes flick to him. “Micah killed my daughter. But you—” He points the cross right at me. “You marked her. You tainted her with your hands, your lust, and she paid for it with her life.”
